Cellular Carriers Voluntarily Commit To Text-to-911

From the Dispatch Monthly Magazine.  Feeling the pressure from cellular subscribers and Congress, the nation’s cellular carriers have voluntarily agreed to provide a “best-efforts” text-to-911 service to any comm center that requests it starting no later than May 2014. The new service is intended to provide emergency reporting via SMS messages until national NG911 service can be provided, perhaps in the next 10 years. In an announcement late Thursday, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T joined the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) to announce the commitment. The service will benefit those who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired, the groups said, without mentioning other potential users of the service. Significantly, the carriers said they will implement the service “independent of their ability to recover these associated costs from state or local governments.” Much of the spotlight for implementing text-to-911 has focused on creating parity for smartphone users who are already used to texting, not on the deaf or speech-impaired community. Proponents have also noted the service could be used by crime victims who cannot speak because of their close proximity to suspects. In the annoucement, the carriers said that before deployment, they will implement a “bounce-back” message to warn customers text-to-911 service is unavailable in their area. They are not required to implement the service for customers roaming outside their home service area. The service will only be provided to comm centers that are technically ready to accept text messages, have been authorized by local or state 911 governing groups, and that make a formal request of the carriers. In a separate announcement, Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski said the the commission will take steps next week to insure text-to-911 is rolled out quickly. “This is good progress,” he said, “but our work is not done.” Download (pdf) the joint carrier announcement and Genachowski’s remarks here.